www.irishtimes.com

Jim Carroll

Music, Life and everything else

“This music blogger IMRO licence thing”

As many of you know, there have been various blog and Twitter rumbles this week about IMRO’s moves to ask music bloggers (ie people who host MP3 files on their site) to pay for an IMRO/MCPSI Limited Online Exploitation Licence. …

While people really should go there and comment on this, I’m very curious about what Irish bands who are IMRO members think about this development, especially those bands who’ve been covered quite intensely by Nialler9 and other blogs in the past. It should be noted from the outset that Niall has said he has no problem paying artist royalties so that’s not the issue under discussion here.

Do bands think it’s a simple matter that every site hosting your music should shut their traps and pay up, even those sites you yourself have pestered for the coverage? Or do you feel there are certain exceptions to be made in the form of blogs which are really hobby sites and not professional ones (Nialler puts his site in the latter category as it hosts ads)? And isn’t it the fact that IMRO fund a lot of worthy tours and enterprises (DOI: I’m the co-founder of the Choice Music Prize which is funded by IMRO) and so the fee goes to a good cause? Or should the fee be ring-fenced for those bands who actually are covered by the blogs?